


in some way

by flightagain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2662016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightagain/pseuds/flightagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the angels fall, Castiel stays in a safehouse. Dean visits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon divergence from the end of s8, although there are elements of s9 (the Ezekiel issue meaning Castiel can't stay at the bunker.)

Castiel wakes up. It’s too bright. 

He strains to see, grimacing in the light, and this is how he remembers that he isn’t an angel anymore. 

There’s stillness for a moment. He breathes. He tries to think, to remember, but then the pain catches up to him. It’s in his head, dull and pounding, and it seems to be everywhere else, too. Mostly his arm. Deep, lancing lines of it. 

Castiel groans, and the sound surprises him right back into silence. 

“Cas?” Dean says. 

He looks to his side.

\--

He manages to sit up in the bed. He’s still feeling tired, and Dean is hovering near him, a hand on his shoulder. His right shoulder, not the one with bandaging on the arm. Dean keeps a hold, and it’s helpful, sort of. 

“Okay?” Dean says, when there are pillows behind Castiel, when the blankets over his legs are straight. There are two blankets. The larger one is white, and the other is knitted and gray. It’s very strange, but Castiel nods, slowly, taking in the room. It’s a bedroom. There’s a dresser, a light brown rug, white walls. A lamp on a small table by the bed. There’s a window, sunlight shining through, trees outside. 

This isn’t the bunker. It also isn’t a motel room, and Castiel is confused.

He looks back at the bed. At the gray blanket. There are memories surfacing, unlinked images in his mind. The car. Walking a dirt path with Dean, one that thinned to nothing in thick grass. Feeling unsteady, his eyes on the ground.

And before that. His siblings. 

He remembers his siblings, and things falls into place. Something tightens in his chest, heavy and cold, something that he needs to breathe around. He looks down at his arm again. It won’t stop hurting. But it’s covered by bandages, bright and white, neatly wrapped.

“You came to get me,” Castiel says. He looks at Dean, who’s moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Castiel had called him, and Dean had found him. He’d been in Dean’s car, he remembers now, holding something tightly to his arm. His coat. The trenchcoat, blood seeping through it, and he’d been fading in and out of consciousness. Dean had been driving. “Thank you,” Castiel says. 

He tries to catch Dean’s eye. Dean isn’t quite looking at him, and it’s always been easier to talk with Dean when they can meet each other’s gaze. But Dean doesn’t look back.

“Of course, man,” he says. One side of his mouth tips upwards.

Castiel knows what Dean had said on the phone. He isn’t angry about what’s happened. He isn’t angry at Castiel. 

It had been a surprise.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says now. Not for the first time. He says it selfishly, though: he’s testing Dean’s reaction. Dean’s already shaking his head, and Castiel watches this like it’s an oasis in the desert, like he is a man dying of thirst.

“You don’t have to be,” Dean says. It isn’t true, but it is so nice to hear. Castiel kind of wants to close his eyes. He doesn’t, though; Dean is looking at him again, with a quiet smile. The kind of smile Dean gets sometimes, usually when there’s just Dean and Castiel. He says, “So. How you feeling?” 

“Fine,” Castiel replies, right off. And then, because he’s remembered now, “You said this is a safehouse.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. He pats the bed, and Castiel looks down at it. “Yeah, it’s not been used for a while, I guess, but. It’s a good one. It’s got wards, we can add a few more, you know. It’s – you like it?” he asks, with a strange kind of nervousness.

Castiel glances around again. He can only see this bedroom. It seems fine. He can’t remember the rest of the house just now. 

He thinks that it has a porch. 

“Yes,” he replies, a little uncertainly, and mostly because he suspects that Dean wants him to. He doesn’t know why it’s important; he isn’t entirely sure why they’re here. Things are a little hazy. Perhaps it was more convenient to come here, though, with his injury. 

He thinks of something else. “You were angry in the car.”

Dean’s face goes kind of still.

“What?” he says. “No.”

Castiel frowns, trying to recall. He’s weary, and his arm is distracting him; the headache and various other pains are all distracting him. And at the time, in the car, he hadn’t even been entirely awake. But he thinks that Dean had been on the phone.

“You were shouting.” 

“Oh,” Dean says. “You heard – uh. I was just – I was stressed out.”

“Were you talking to Sam?” Castiel tries. He still thinks Dean had sounded angry. 

Dean’s quiet for a moment. 

“Yeah,” he says, finally. “It was Sam.” He laughs, and Castiel doesn’t understand the laugh. His eyelids feel like weights, though, closing heavily with each blink. “Cas,” Dean says. “You should rest some more, man. You’re pretty beat up.”

Castiel shakes his head, too slowly.

“Kevin’s working on the reversal?” he says. Dean had mentioned this. It’s important. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, and Castiel doesn’t realize that he’s closed his eyes until he feels Dean’s hand on his shoulder again. “Yeah, he’s got it, man. Get some sleep.”

\--

It feels very strange, being here with Dean.

There are the bandages on Castiel’s arm, and there are two more, that Dean calls butterfly bandages, on his face. Castiel touches them, interested, and Dean tells him to stop. 

It’s difficult to move at first, to stand or walk without everything aching. Castiel learns that this is because of all the bruising.

“You did pretty well, though, dude,” Dean says. “Getting away from those dicks, when they’re still – they’ve still got some mojo.”

Castiel keeps his eyes on his arm. Dean is changing the bandages. Castiel can walk to the couch now, and that’s where they’ve been sitting. He’s seen the rest of the safehouse, too. It reminds him a little of Bobby’s, although it’s smaller, with only one level. There are wooden floors with rugs on them, a large kitchen table, a bookshelf and small television in the living room. The couch is a faded brown, blankets hanging on the back. There are a lot of books.

Dean has a small box on his lap, with bandages and antiseptic wipes, with the painkillers that he made Castiel take, so the bandaging would go better. The wound on Castiel’s arm is quite a bad one. 

Dean isn’t talking much about what’s happened. He’s said that Kevin is working on translating a reversal of the spell, and that Sam has recovered from the trials. They’re both at the bunker. Castiel’s siblings are out in the world, but their grace is still intact; they won’t be suffering. 

They’re angry with him.

“Ah,” Castiel says, by accident, at a particularly strong twinge of pain.

He wishes that he hadn’t, particularly when Dean says, “Sorry, sorry,” one hand moving to touch Castiel’s wrist, there and then gone.

“It’s fine,” Castiel mutters, embarrassed. 

He is human, now, and it’s so different. 

It’s good to focus on other things. 

Dean helps with this. While he’s quiet on the subject of what Castiel has done, he’s very talkative otherwise. Mostly about human things. They sit in front of the television and Dean talks over all the programs. Castiel’s still tired, his injuries wearing him down, and it’s good to sit and listen. The couch is comfortable, the safehouse warded and a fair distance from the town that Dean says is nearby. Castiel has looked out the kitchen window and seen the clearing of grass around them, the trees. He’s sat at the table while Dean’s cooked food at the stove, and he’s made some things himself. Coffee, toast. Breakfast, once, cracking eggs and adding bacon, watching oil spit from the pan. He’d put the food onto plates and seen that Dean was watching him. 

Castiel sits on the porch that evening. There’s a bench there, and the air is cold. He can see leaves turned yellow and orange, red and brown. Some have already fallen. He imagines the grass going brittle with frost, the trees all edged with white, winter arriving here. This is a quiet place. Castiel has never spent time like this before. Not when he’s been himself, when he’s known himself. He has no memories like this that haven’t fractured, that haven’t become wrong, unsettling to recall. 

And there’s something like guilt hovering at the edges, from time to time. Because he likes this. He likes being here. Yes, it is frustrating to be slowed by his injuries, to have Dean showing him how to tend to his arm, how to cover it for the shower, when Dean surely has far better ways to be spending his time. But all the same. Despite that.

This is nice. 

Castiel looks at the bandages on his arm, and he imagines that the whole safehouse is swaddled with them, that the clearing is wrapped tight. Keeping it enclosed. But he’s getting better. He’s healing. He suspects that they’ll return to the bunker soon, and he feels like that’s all right. That is what’s right to do. It’s still been good, to be here.

The front door opens behind him, and Dean steps onto the porch. They’ve updated the house’s warding now, and added more out here, too. Castiel has shown Dean the ones that he’s drawn, ones that could be placed in the bunker as well. He’d explained the meanings, the different points, until Dean had stopped him to say, “Cas, hey, you give me the basics, I’ll just go with it, yeah?”

“Oh,” Castiel had said. “Yeah.” He had just been glad to have a way to help. To be useful.

“Hey,” Dean says now, and he drops a jacket onto Castiel’s lap. It’s black, and similar to the ones that Dean often wears. Dean had bought it earlier, when he went down into the town, using one of the cards that he’s given Castiel. Castiel has these cards, now, and a new phone, some identification. More clothes. Things that humans have. That hunters have. 

“Hello,” he says to Dean.

Dean sits down beside him on the bench. The sky is faded blue, the clouds faint and thin. The leaves are moving in the breeze, rustling, and Castiel sees it all as a human would. 

He tells Dean that he’s feeling better, but Dean only says that they should both visit the town tomorrow, then. Castiel needs an anti-possession tattoo. He needs warding against his siblings. Dean talks about a diner there, too, and he says that there are some cool stores, ones that Castiel would probably like. 

“Sound good?” Dean says, and Castiel thinks it does.

\--

Castiel’s grace was carelessly taken. He hasn’t really been thinking about that. About the absence. But he has been thinking, quietly, that it might not all be gone. There might be remainders. Small, insignificant. But there. He dreams of nothing that night, and then he dreams a burst of light. Sudden and sharp. He wakes up with his head aching, his head wanting to split apart. He lies in the dark, shocked. He smiles.

The next day they leave the safehouse, walking across the clearing to the trees. There’s the dirt path that Castiel remembers, shaded by the branches overhead, cutting a sheltered route through the forest. Everything feels fresh here, his skin chilled in a way that he likes. His hands are cold, but he doesn’t mind. He can hear birds overhead, calling to one another, but he can’t pinpoint exactly where they are now. He looks for them, trying to see amongst the leaves. It’s surprisingly difficult.

“You okay there?” Dean asks, after a little while. Castiel stops searching. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m okay.”

Dean throws him a quizzical look, but then he’s talking about the town again, about where they’ll have lunch. He sounds enthusiastic. 

There’s been no point to considering the last year, the things that have happened during it, and so Castiel has not been doing that. But as they reach the town, he lets himself remember Dean’s prayers. The ones that happened after Castiel left with the tablet. These ones are still clear in his memory, and he thinks them over now. Some of them had been angry. But even in the angry ones, Dean had been saying the same things: Just come back, Cas. We need you here, man. You’re never fucking here, don’t you think maybe it’d help? 

Castiel slides a glance Dean’s way, now. He’s walking with his hands in his jacket pockets, and he seems relaxed, at ease. He’s been talking to Castiel, making jokes and moving around the safehouse, cooking and going through the books, everything as though it’s perfectly normal. As though it’s all right with him.

Dean looks over suddenly, noticing Castiel’s gaze, and Castiel almost looks away. He feels oddly caught. But he tries a smile, instead. Experimental. 

And Dean grins back at him. A little confused, perhaps, but a definite grin.

“Diner’s down this street,” he says, and Castiel nods. He’s thinking, with a slow, dawning surprise: Okay. All right. He’s thinking that he understands.

In the diner, a few customers look at Castiel oddly, but this is something that he’d expected. His face hasn’t quite healed yet, and Dean’s explained different lies that he should use if he’s asked about the bruises. It seems to depends on who’s asking. Castiel has gone over these in his mind, just in case. But nobody asks. 

They order their food. While they’re waiting, Dean talks about another place that he’s eaten recently, and then about the food on the menu, giving opinions, pointing his finger at Castiel over the issue of seafood in diners. It’s _sketchy_ , apparently, and never ordered.

“Well. Some people must order it,” Castiel says, skeptical. Otherwise, why would it be kept on the menu?

“Idiots,” Dean tell him firmly. “Idiots order it, okay?”

Castiel almost smiles.

“Okay,” he says instead, and Dean narrows his eyes, then nods, like he’s accepting that response. 

“But, uh, you’ll try different stuff, I guess,” he says. “Figure out what you like.” He frowns down at the menu for a moment, his expression difficult to read, and then he sets it back on the table. “We’ll figure things out,” he says, suddenly. Castiel looks at him, confused. “All this – the angel stuff,” Dean mutters, glancing to the side, then back. “We’ll figure it out.” He holds Castiel’s gaze, and Castiel manages to nod. “Okay,” Dean says. “Good.” 

Castiel feels grateful. For this, for Dean. He feels it as something that rises in his chest.

“Dean,” he says. “You know that I appreciate this. All your help.”

Dean shifts in the booth, his eyes on the table again. He mutters, “Cas.”

Castiel waits, but that’s all he says. Their food arrives. 

\--

He gets the tattoos that afternoon. Dean has talked him through the process. He walks with Castiel to the tattoo studio, and then announces that he’ll leave him to it. There are stores he can check out, he says. A secondhand bookstore, a woodwork place.

Castiel soon learns to be glad of this. His tattoo artist is named Gabby. She’s shorter than Castiel, with a lot of curling black hair and plenty of tattoos herself. Flowers and branches and other things, small words looping around her arm. Gabby points out a spot for him to sit while she prepares. 

“All right,” she says, soon enough. “You can lie down.”

“What?” Castiel says. He’s looking at the tattoo gun. Dean had called it this earlier, a tattoo gun, but it doesn’t actually look like a gun. It looks very different. Gabby is holding it in her hand.

“Stomach for these, right? You’ll need to lie down, lift your shirt.” Gabby shrugs a shoulder, nodding her head at where Castiel is sitting. There’s cushioning, and a pillow of sorts. “It’s pretty comfortable.”

Castiel keeps looking at the tattoo gun. “Okay.” 

He lies down. It is very strange. Gabby pulls a chair over and lifts the gun, and Castiel lets his eyes slide away. 

“You don’t like needles?” Gabby asks him, as she gets started. It’s a little painful. Not particularly. It’s all right, and really, Castiel can relax. 

“They’re fine,” he says, to the wall at his side. There are tattoo designs on there that are interesting to look at. Gabby makes a humming sound.

She asks questions as she works, and Castiel supposes that she’s making conversation. He knows that he should probably improve at this now, so he tries to reply to her each time. It’s always been easy enough to talk with Dean, and only somewhat more difficult with Sam. But he doesn’t think he does too well with Gabby. She’s nice about it, though.

“I don’t recognize these,” she says at one point, her eyes on the designs, and Castiel is distracted enough that he forgets to lie. He tells her they’re protective, and he sees Gabby’s eyes drift to his face, to the bandage on his arm. 

“They’re symbolic,” Castiel adds, hurriedly.

“Yeah,” Gabby says. “I get it.” She gives him a smile that he recognizes as reassuring. “This one’s pretty cool,” she says, nodding at the angel warding. The Enochian.

“Thank you,” he replies.

\--

Afterwards, he meets up with Dean. 

“It go all right?” Dean asks him, glancing at Castiel’s shirt, then back at his face, then away.

“Fine,” Castiel says, and Dean nods. He puts his hands in his pockets and frowns at the sidewalk.

“Cool. Let’s head back.”

“Oh,” Castiel says. “All right.” 

The walk back is quiet. Dean seems distracted, and Castiel isn’t sure what to say. He asks about Sam and Kevin, but this seems the wrong thing to do, so he concentrates on the ground instead, on not stumbling or walking in a way that’s too painful. He’s frustrated by how weary he still feels, by his injures and these tattoos. He wants to sit down. He wants to not be feeling these things. He thinks of the light, of his dream the night before; he tries to focus on that instead.

It’s a relief to get back to the safehouse. 

“Would you like coffee?” he asks Dean, as they walk in. 

“I’m good,” Dean says, sounding odd. Pinched. But Castiel does want coffee, so he goes into the kitchen all the same. Dean doesn’t follow. Castiel hears him walk through the living room, heading into the room that he’s been sleeping in. It’s not until Castiel is sitting at the table, a little uncomfortable, his coffee in front of him, that Dean reappears. He’s holding his duffel bag. Castiel looks at it. It’s packed. “So, uh,” Dean says. “I got a call from Sam, earlier.” 

“Yes?” Castiel prompts, after a moment.

“Uh, yeah, yes,” Dean says. “He says – well, I should probably head back to the bunker, is all. Now you’re all, uh, healing up.”

Dean is acting edgily, nervously, but Castiel doesn’t see why. He’d thought that they’d be returning to the bunker soon. He’s a little surprised they’ve stayed away this long. 

“Right,” he says, and he stands up. He looks down at the mug. Dean would definitely not allow it in his car. Castiel looks at the duffel bag again. “Are we going right now?” he asks, and Dean’s eyes go wide, his mouth parts. Like panic, Castiel thinks, confused. 

He frowns at Dean, at his awkward expression, feeling unsure. And then he sees it. Then things fall neatly together.

Dean has a duffel bag, all ready to go. Castiel does not. Dean wants to head back to the bunker, right now. Alone.

“Oh,” Castiel says. Unfortunately, he’s entirely unable to think of anything to say after this, and that means Dean is talking instead.

“I was thinking – we were thinking it’s good for you here,” Dean says. He’s speaking quickly, his eyes fixed on a spot to the right of Castiel. “You like it here, right? And you know what you’re doing now, and it’s just, y’know. The angels are pissed at you. We’ve gotta keep the bunker safe. We’ve – ” He stops, and presses his mouth shut.

“Of course,” Castiel says. 

This is only a misunderstanding, after all: this is only Castiel having misunderstood. The last few days are just something he’s misjudged. It isn’t as though that’s even a novel occurrence.

But Dean’s jaw is clenched now, like he’s angry. He’s still not looking at Castiel. “I’m sorry,” Castiel adds. “For – presuming.” His face feels too warm. There’s no point to that feeling, though. There’s no need. 

“I’m gonna visit,” Dean says. “I’ll come back, see how you’re doing.”

Castiel isn’t sure what to say. He takes too long, and Dean adds, “And call me, dude, any trouble, you can – ”

“Yes,” Castiel says. “Thank you for allowing me to stay here.” That’s better. He feels better about that, but Dean is just shaking his head, like it’s another wrong thing.

Dean doesn’t say much else. He mentions visiting again, and then he leaves, quickly. Castiel has to follow him to the door, so that he can lock up. But he forgets to close it at first, watching instead as Dean walks away. Dean’s shoulders are drawn tight, his hand a fist around the handle of the duffel bag. 

Dean glances back at him, and Castiel startles. He shuts the door, fast. He locks it.

It’s silent, in the safehouse. It’s still. The last few days suddenly feel very distant. Like a void in his mind, far away; empty and blank. 

He looks back into the hallway, at the house. 

This is where I’m staying, he thinks. This is where I’m going to stay.

It’s like he doesn’t believe himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Things are different, after Dean goes.

Castiel isn’t sure what to do. Before, Dean had always seemed to decide: when to change the bandages, when to cook, when to put the television on and talk about different things. It had all been very easy to go along with. Now, there is just a lot of time.

He puts up more wards. He adds them to the linings of the windows and doors, so that each room is protected. It takes a while, and it makes him dizzy, but Dean was right: his siblings hate him now, even more so than before. And this house doesn’t belong to him. If he’s going to be here anyway, the least he can do is look after it. He makes each line wide and careful.

He finishes up by the door to the room he’s been sleeping in, and his body is protesting, it’s wanting him to stop. His arm and his head and his stomach, the hunger and thirst. The weariness.

It makes him angry.

He decides to clean. There are cleaning products in the hallway closet, things for dusting, for sweeping and mopping. Castiel has cleaned before. Back when he wasn’t himself. When he thought that he was someone else entirely. He’d vacuumed, he’d mowed the lawn, he’d dried dishes passed his way. These memories are strange ones, though; they’re thin. He can’t quite reach them all the way. And the later ones, tidying in the cabin, making himself useful there, are splintered in a different way altogether.

Now Castiel cleans every room in the safehouse, lightheaded and aching, and he is himself the entire time. He knows exactly who he is. It isn’t any better.

-

Later, he’s sitting on the couch. The safehouse is mostly dark around him now, and he doesn’t know what to do. It’s a bad feeling. 

Eventually, he finds himself looking down at the bandage on his arm. The last time it was changed, the wound seemed to have knit itself back together well enough. There is probably, he thinks, no real point to the bandaging at all. It only itches. He doesn’t like it, not at all. He doesn’t want it anymore.

He pulls off the small pieces of medical tape. He unwinds the white bandage, fast, the gauze appearing, and he pulls that off too, until there is his only the long, healing tear in his arm. He grits his teeth, his mouth twisting, his jaw clenched tight. It isn’t bleeding, though. It’s fine. He stands up unsteadily. He throws the bandage away. 

 

-

The next day, the sunlight through the window wakes him. 

Castiel opens his eyes. There are lines of light hitting the floorboards in front of him. There are dust motes drifting through. 

He blinks. The dust is moving very slowly. He focuses on the light, letting it blur, letting it fill his vision. He’s on the couch; he’d fallen asleep here last night. He stares at the light and he can’t remember if he dreamed.

Breakfast, he thinks, after a while. A shower. That’s what people do in the morning. Castiel has been doing it. He can do it again.

Perhaps, he thinks, as he gets himself a glass of water, as he puts bread in the toaster, perhaps he doesn’t actually dream. Not real ones. Perhaps that’s something that’s just for humans. Castiel has been starting to think that what humans are, and whatever it is that he is now, aren’t actually the same. They can’t be.

He eats slowly. The hunger that he’d felt the night before seems different now; it’s almost difficult to eat. But he finishes the toast eventually. He’s washing his plate at the sink when he looks out the window and sees the wildflowers.

-

There are two flowerbeds outside. Castiel walks around the house to look at them. It’s early, and there’s dew on the grass, soaking through his socks, cold and uncomfortable. He takes them off. He stands in front of the flowerbeds, rectangles of soil surrounded by wooden borders. This was a garden, once. Somebody made this, somebody grew things here. 

Castiel kneels down, resting on one of the planks of wood, and he surveys the first flowerbed. The wildflowers are growing up through the soil, and even through cracks in the wood in places. Humans gave names to these plants, and Castiel knows some: poppy mallow and pestemon, white yarrow and lead plant. There’s pink and white and purple amongst the greens and browns. But everything here is growing close, growing together, clamoring for air. They’re choking each other, he thinks. They’ll die, like this. 

Castiel frowns. He leans forwards, resting a hand uncertainly on the soil. 

He starts to clear some space. 

He doesn’t think that he’s ever gardened before. It isn’t in the memories that he has. But there’s something good about it. He likes the feeling of the soil, how it’s cooler, compacted, as he digs his hands in deeper. He likes the cold morning air, even as it makes his hands shake. He’s forgotten a jacket, or boots; he only has the t-shirt and jeans that he’s been wearing. 

It’s nice out here. It’s quiet, too; his mind is quiet, focused on the work.

He doesn’t do too much. Just enough to stop things dying. He stands back up and there’s dirt beneath his fingernails and in the lines on his palms; it’s on the knees of his jeans and caked to his feet. He looks down at it with interest.

He thinks about going back inside. He thinks about taking a shower, like people do. But he’s looking out at the trees now. The morning is fresh, the sky pale and new. It’s better here than in the safehouse. He thinks that he could walk through the woods instead.

-

Days pass. Castiel lets them. He doesn’t need to think about it. He spends a lot of time outside. The woods are a good place to be. They’re quiet, but not silent: there are rustling trees, birds and animals, the sound of his own footsteps through fallen leaves. He tries to walk softly.

One day, he finds a bench at the side of a path. It’s smooth but uneven, no metal or armrests, and Castiel wonders who made it, how it came to be here. He sits down. He can feel the breeze on his face, through his hair, and he can watch the leaves move, their different colors, a couple of them drifting to the ground. 

But it isn’t long before the tension steals over him. He wants, quite suddenly, to move on. This has been happening. He’s finding that he doesn’t like to be in one place for too long. There’s a certain stillness that falls, a silence quite separate to the sounds around him, and he doesn’t like it. 

He can always come back to this bench, he supposes. As far as he can tell, there will be plenty of time to come back.

This thought sends him to the wildflowers again. He’s been going there, sometimes, just to look. He has stood and watched them when it’s been too dark to really see, when it’s been raining. He doesn’t know why. He knows that lately he hasn’t been thinking too much about the reasons for things. But the flowers are doing better than they were. 

Today, he stands in front of them and considers. The safehouse is warded for protection. And the flowerbeds have wooden borders, well-suited for the same sigils, but Castiel is thinking of other things. Other sigils. Growth. Nurture. There’s so much of his language that he hasn’t used in so long. 

He wonders if now, he might forget.

These sigils don’t need blood, so he carves them into the borders instead. He is tired, because he always seems to be, and he is starting to feel hungry once again. His food supplies are very low. He’s been trying not to eat too often, but he knows that he’ll have to go down into the town again. He isn’t sure why he’s been avoiding this. He thinks that it might just be because he doesn’t want to go.

The day before, Castiel had received a text message from Dean. He’d seen it when he’d got back to the safehouse, late in the evening, the phone left on the kitchen table that day.

 _Hey, you doing okay?_ the message had said. Castiel had looked at it for a while, sitting at the table, holding the phone in both hands. Finally, he’d typed out: _I’m fine. Are you?_

The reply had been fast. _Cool, yeah we’re good thanks._

Castiel had kept sitting at the table, but there hadn’t been anything else. So he’d put the phone down and he’d gone to lie on the couch. 

He sleeps on the couch, mostly. He’s brought the gray blanket over, and one of the pillows. It’s easier to fall asleep if he leaves the television on at a low volume, if he can close his eyes and hear it in the background, constant and murmuring and indistinct. It doesn’t matter what’s on.

One morning there isn’t any more food, and he needs to walk to the town. He takes a shower first, watching as the dirt from the woods, from the wildflowers, stains the water, and he stays there until the water runs off of him clear and clean. He’s been keeping up with the instructions that Gabby gave him for the tattoos, and they seem fine; they don’t hurt anymore. His arm hurts, but it does that, and it looks healthy enough. And there are the bruises on his face and on his body, but they’re fading. Castiel looks down at himself and thinks how strange it is that this is all that he has. These injuries and this body and there’s no way out of it anymore, there’s no escape.

It’s a bad direction to send his thoughts. 

He turns off the shower and the air goes cold. He stands there. The body he is in is shivering. He tries to ignore it. He thinks about the night before, when he’d dreamed the light again: the brief, sharp burst, overwhelming. He’d woken with another headache. He thinks about that; he thinks that it might happen again, maybe; it could. 

After a while, he manages to get out of the shower. To use a towel, to go and find clothes. Clean ones. The jeans that he’s been wearing are very muddy. There’s a tear on one of the knees. Castiel selects a different pair. He dresses and puts on socks and boots and the jacket, and then he gets the wallet and the phone and his weapon and decides that he’s ready to go. 

Walking through the trees, his hands in his pockets, he begins to think. The warding that he has now means that his siblings can’t find him. They can’t deliberately seek him out. 

They could still _see_ him, he knows. Through slower methods of searching, or even by chance. Bad luck.

He’s going into a town full of people. He’s thinking of the Biggerson’s in Santa Fe. Of the people. Kara. He isn’t walking anymore. He tries to draw a breath, and tries again, and it shouldn’t be so difficult. 

He stands stupidly, frozen, amongst the trees. He doesn’t know what to do.

But there are the wards on the house, he remembers. The new ones that he’s added. He thinks about the sigils on the wildflowers’ borders, and he thinks that he could ward himself further, too; he could combine sigils, even, or recreate. He thinks of shielding, of redirection, and it’s almost exciting: like a challenge. He doesn’t finish the walk to the town. He goes back to the safehouse instead, where he can write out his ideas, where he can design something new. It can be another tattoo. More than one, if need be. He can be unseen by his siblings. He can erase himself to them, completely. 

-

He gets the new tattoo on his good arm. Gabby is at the studio again. She remembers him, and when she says hello, Castiel realizes that it’s been a while since he’s spoken to anybody. He has to clear his throat. Gabby asks other things: how his day is going, if he’s considering a sleeve. 

“I don’t think so,” Castiel tells her. He’d prefer to ask what she means by that, but it’s a risk. It could be something that he’s just supposed to understand; something people would just know. There are so many things like this. It’s never really mattered before. 

-

He goes to the grocery store. There are a lot of people there, purposeful and loud, sometimes with shopping carts. Castiel has a basket. He tries to focus on the food. He’s bought food before, too. For Dean, once, but earlier than that as well. He remembers being given a list, walking to the grocery store and walking back. He doesn’t have a list today. His memories aren’t helpful either. They leave him standing in front of the bread for too long, until somebody says, “Hey, you gonna make a decision?” 

It makes Castiel jump, though it shouldn’t. He picks up a loaf.

He supposes that it doesn’t matter much what he chooses, anyway. It isn’t as though anyone will laugh if he picks the wrong thing, or notice. So he just keeps going. He picks things up and puts them in the basket. 

He buys the food and walks back to the safehouse and things catch up to him, a little.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. He doesn't know what he's been doing, since Dean left. There is so much _time_. And he knows that he’s supposed to be staying here, but surely he isn’t doing it correctly. Surely Dean didn’t mean for this.

He stands in the kitchen for a long while. His siblings are surviving. Kevin is translating the spell reversal. Castiel is here while he isn’t of any use.

It all makes sense, but Castiel still can’t seem to move. He’s thinking about the most pointless things. Not understanding Gabby. The prayers Dean had made, when Castiel had the tablet. The morning he made breakfast for Dean.

That one changes things. It cuts off his thoughts, fast, and he’s moving again. Thinking properly again. He eats some of the food, because he’s been hungry. He puts the rest away. He taps his hand against the kitchen counter, considering, and then he goes to look at the books. 

The bookshelf in the safehouse is well-stocked. There are plenty of books of lore, the type of thing that hunters tend to have. Castiel frowns, then selects one. He has knowledge of these things. He could add notes, extra information, for anyone who comes here after he's gone.

It’s good to go through the book. He adds notes in English, and then in Enochian, for his own reference. Occasionally, he murmurs the Enochian aloud, for no real reason. Just to hear it. It isn’t in his true voice, but all the same.

When it’s evening, he goes outside again. He likes the wildflowers, but he knows that humans grow other things too. Castiel is thinking of growing vegetables. His own food. People do that. He could make another bed of soil, and he saw a gardening store in town. He could go there. There are all sorts of things he could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> glossostiel has drawn [art](http://glossostiel.tumblr.com/post/108594948336/) for this chapter! thank you, it's so lovely. <33


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel plants a vegetable garden. Broad beans and peas, carrots. Winter things. He has gardening equipment now, and gardening gloves. The woman in the store had seen his hands and told him that the gloves were important.

They’re gray, and a tough material. Sometimes, when it’s cold in the safehouse, or out in the woods, Castiel keeps them on. He’s added other blankets to the couch now too, for when he’s sleeping. He wears his jacket inside.

He isn’t sure exactly how long he’s been here now, but it feels like a very long time. He thinks that it feels like longer than it is. Like too much time.

Dean sends texts, sometimes, checking in. Each time Castiel replies that he is fine, and Dean says the same about himself. Castiel tries not to think about this too much. 

He gardens and makes notes in the books, because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

The notes start to change, as he works; they start to diverge from his original goals. His mind drifts when he’s trying to read, and he finds himself noting down all sorts of things. Enochian words he happens to think of; ones that he decides he likes. The shape of them, or the sound. He notes down things to buy from the store. He fills the margin of a book with what he supposes is a grocery list, and then he scratches it out, hurried and guilty. What am I doing? he thinks.

The days can blur a little. He hasn’t always been sleeping at the proper human times, and that doesn’t help. Sometimes he falls asleep at the kitchen table, working on a book; a couple of times, it happens when he’s sitting out on the porch, watching the trees. He sleeps during the day, or he wakes in the middle of the night. It leaves him feeling drained, off-kilter. Not quite real. He dreams of the light from time to time, and it’s the only dream he has. It always leaves him with what he thinks are migraines. Nausea and dizziness, a horrible sickening, thudding pain. But he likes the dreams. He’s pleased to have them. He thinks that they’re important.

He doesn’t like the safehouse. He’s starting to hate it. The couch and the bookcase, the kitchen and bathroom, the closed doors to the other rooms. He thinks that this is because he doesn’t belong there. Not really. It’s just a place that he’s been put; it’s not one where anyone wants him to be. He supposes that there isn’t a place like that.

When he goes out into the woods, it feels easier at least. It doesn’t feel like he’s taking up space he doesn’t deserve. He still spends a lot of time out there; he walks and walks and the trees stretch on for a very long time. 

Castiel walks, and he wonders again, over and over in a blank sort of way: what am I doing. What am I doing here. He’s so tired. He’s hungry, too, and his legs feel like heavy things, like strange weights he has to force forwards with every step. He’s far into the woods and it’s night, now. It’s cold. He sits down on the grass and he leans back to rest against a tree trunk. It isn’t comfortable. His back hurts. He shuts his eyes. 

That night, the light is very bright. It’s too bright, but in the dream, Castiel moves forward; he moves right into it.

He’s awake then, gasping for air, retching and almost blinded by the pain. He leans forward, holding his head, freezing and disoriented. Grace, he thinks through the confusion, it must be, it has to be grace, and he’s thought it all this time. But he touches just below his nose, where he feels a strange wetness, and there’s only blood.

\--

It’s still dark, and Castiel walks back to the safehouse. He showers and puts on new clothes. He stands in the living room for a very long time. 

The house lightens slowly around him. There’s a book on the kitchen table still. There’s the garden outside. Castiel stands there and breathes and waits for his thoughts to return to him. 

I’m useless, he thinks at last. I am so useless. 

The thought doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t change anything. He stays where he is. He feels hollowed and pathetic and he just keeps thinking, there’s no point. There isn’t.

Later that day, there’s a text from Dean. He wants to visit.

\--

Castiel stands in the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. He supposes that he looks quite different to the last time Dean was there. The hair, and the beard. He stares at his face and it makes him feel tired. 

After a while, he trims the beard using scissors he finds behind the bathroom mirror. It goes well enough. He doesn’t really feel like shaving, though. The beard is good for the cold, maybe, and his hair’s a little untidy, but it’s warmer like that too. 

What does it matter? he thinks. It doesn’t matter at all. But he still cleans up the safehouse. He dusts and sweeps and tidies. The safehouse isn’t his; it’s something that should be looked after. He moves the blankets and pillow from the couch, back into the room that he hasn’t been sleeping in. He does this uncertainly. It feels strange in that room. Empty. 

The cleaning is good though, like before. It’s good to do something, to have something to focus on. When he’s done, he looks around and decides that he wants something more. Something different, but he doesn’t know what. Finally, he takes a tall glass from one of the cupboards and fills it a little, then takes a few of the wildflowers from outside. He puts them in the glass, in the center of the kitchen table. It’s like a vase. This is something that houses have. It looks nice, Castiel thinks. He should have done it before.

Dean hasn’t arrived yet, so he takes out one of the books he’s been working on and he sits at the kitchen table, the wildflowers in front of him. After a while of just sitting, he sketches the flowers in a margin of the book. They don’t look quite right, but they look okay. He doesn’t scratch them out. 

He flips through the book, looking at what he’s filled it with. There are practical notes near the beginning, and then there are the words, the Enochian, that he likes. He considers these carefully. Then he draws the wildflowers again, beside the word for growth. It’s a better drawing on the second try.

When Dean eventually knocks at the door, Castiel is trying to draw his flowerbed from memory, all along the bottom of the page.

\--

“Dude, you’re growing vegetables,” is the first thing that Dean says. “And, hey. Peach fuzz again.” Dean is grinning. He’s standing at the door in his jacket and red plaid shirt, his jeans and boots just like always, and he’s grinning right at Castiel. It’s startling.

“Yes,” Castiel replies. Then, “Hello.” It’s a shock, Dean being here. It’s jarring, and Castiel thinks of that night, walking in the woods, waking up in them, and he feels almost panicked. It’s too different, he thinks. And he thinks, Dean can’t know. He can’t find out.

“Hey,” Dean is saying back, still smiling. He looks back out from the porch, over at the flowerbeds. “A vegetable garden,” he says to himself, kind of soft. Then, “Hey, you could’ve pulled up the weeds, you know. You didn’t have to dig a whole new thing.”

 _The weeds?_ Castiel almost says. Then he looks at the wildflowers, where Dean is looking too. Bright colors, growing well. The weeds, Castiel thinks. The weeds? He stares at them and tries to come up with a reply.

“I mean,” Dean says, after a moment. “Those are nice too, though. You know.”

He sounds strange. Castiel puts his hands in his pockets. He says, “Would you like to come inside?”

Dean does. Castiel shuts the door firmly behind him. 

“So you’re gardening? You like gardening?” Dean’s oddly enthusiastic, peering around the living room. “Looking nice,” he says, eyeing the wards, the neatly placed cushions on the couch. “How you doing?” he adds, and he’s speaking so quickly that Castiel hasn’t had time to address anything yet. Dean looks at Castiel, then narrows his eyes a little, his gaze intent in a way that makes Castiel want to move, want to get away from it. “Hey, man, are you eating?” Dean says, with a sudden frown.

Castiel stares.

“I have to eat,” he tells Dean slowly. Dean feels too fast, too much to keep up with. Castiel has the bizarre feeling that he needs to keep blinking, to help take him in.

“No, I know. I meant – ” But Dean stops and shakes his head. He rubs a hand across his jaw. “We could go to that diner again,” he says instead. “While I’m here. Let’s do that. My treat, okay?” 

“Okay,” Castiel replies, feeling very uncertain. He waits for Dean to speak again, to explain why he’s visiting. But Dean’s looking into the kitchen now. Castiel remembers the glass with the wildflowers in it, with the weeds, and he can see Dean’s face when Dean notices them. There’s a hot, uncomfortable feeling rushing fast through Castiel. Embarrassment, he knows. I’m stupid, he thinks angrily. I’m so stupid. He doesn’t want it to matter, but it does. He remembers the drawings in the book. He wants to tear out the pages. “Dean," he says quickly. "Has Kevin made progress?” 

“Oh, uh. Some." But Dean's tone is the real answer. Not much. Castiel nods, glancing away. Down at the floor that he swept earlier. Then Dean says, “Hey. Hey, Cas. I’m pretty beat from the drive, you know? You want to watch TV for a while?” He pauses, then adds, “Like before?” And something about that question has Castiel looking back at Dean. When he does, he realizes something: Dean looks tired. He looks troubled, Castiel thinks, in a way that seems long-standing. As though stress has become settled on his face.

It tugs at something in Castiel. It makes him say, “Okay.” 

Dean smiles, and he looks like he might be relieved. “Are you all right?” Castiel asks as they sit down.

“Yeah, man,” Dean says casually, picking up the remote, bringing the television to life. “I'm doing good.” 

But Castiel has learned that doesn’t mean much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's a short update after so long! but hopefully the last chapter will be soon. :)


End file.
